In my last post, I presented three news articles from the previous three days reflecting the double standard in how cops, prosecutors and judges are treated when they are caught driving drunk. In the judge’s case, despite aggravating facts she avoided any jail time…But surely she’ll be removed from sitting on the bench, right?

Secret Discipline of $150,000-a-year DUI Judge ‘Could Take Two Years’

Chicago, IL. Jan. 25 – She quietly pleaded guilty to drunken driving and was sentenced on the day President Obama was inaugurated.

But it may be another two years before Cook County Judge Sheila McGinnis is disciplined by the authorities who oversee Illinois judges – if they discipline her, according to the executive director of the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board.

McGinnis on Tuesday dodged a potential one-year jail term when she admitted drunkenly crashing her Chevrolet sport utility vehicle into the back of a family-of-four’s minivan May 9 in Tinley Park.

With the attention of the Southland and the world focused on Washington, D.C., Judge Edward Burmila fined McGinnis $1,000, ordered her to complete an 18-month probation stint, to attend counseling and to attend a victim impact panel during a brief hearing at the Markham courthouse.

Secrecy governs the process by which judges are disciplined in Illinois, meaning the JIB cannot reveal if an official complaint has been made against McGinnis in her role as a judge, JIB executive director Kathy Twine said…

A Southtown Star survey of Illinois Court Commission records shows that not one of the eight Illinois judges investigated for DUIs since 1973 has been removed from the bench for even one day…

Want to bet what’s going to happen to this judge after two years of secret "investigation"? Or what your sentence would have been standing in front of this same judge with the same facts?

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on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 11:05 am and is filed under Duiblog.
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